To play an Audio CD with VLC on VL 5.8 SOHO, you accept the default Device name as "/dev/cdrom". The tricky part is that the default value for Track is "0", and you must increment that value to the total number of tracks on the CD. Then click OK to close the dialog. When configured in this manner, VLC starts up playing the last track, so to play Track 1 first, you must move the slider to the far left.

If you know a better way to play a CD with VLC, please describe it in this thread.

EDIT: Another way to handle the Track value is to set it to a number greater than the actual number of tracks, for which VLC starts playing at Track 1, thence to Track 2 and so on. ("30" usually works)